Hollywood is full of stars. It certainly doesn’t come as a surprise to encounter them on Hollywood Boulevard—the iconic street boasting the beloved Walk of Fame. In the heart of it all, at the intersection of Hollywood and Highland, you’ll find the Hollywood Wax Museum, the Hollywood Museum, and the historic El Capitan theatre. And just a few yards north of that: JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles. This is where our story begins.

Ovation Hollywood, where JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles is located, is a sprawling indoor-outdoor shopping and entertainment complex. The bright space is consistently crowded with tourists from all over the world. When you arrive, it’s impossible not to see Alolan Exeggutor among the many palm trees lining the perimeter. And if the experience of seeing Pokémon-like flora in the real world inspires even the smallest spark of joy, the POKÉMON × KOGEI | Playful Encounters of Pokémon and Japanese Craft exhibit at JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles will blow your mind, and likely forever change the way you see Pokémon. Liberated from their typical two-dimensional world of animated television and video games, the Pokémon come into sharp relief. And the feelings inspired by this unexpected visual experience are varied and intense.

The second-floor gallery space where this transformation takes place is rather traditional—a large space with monotone white walls surrounded by large glass windows—so the sight of the Pikachu in the exhibit logo is…unexpected. What is the world-famous Pokémon doing at an art gallery in Los Angeles? As it turns out, Pikachu is here to facilitate an international celebration of Pokémon and incredible Japanese craft called kogei. Best of all, Pikachu isn’t alone. The 20 artists of the National Crafts Museum who collectively created the more-than-70 pieces drew inspiration from hundreds of Pokémon. Beyond just the Pokémon, they ruminated on the regions themselves, on the various attacks Pokémon perform in battle, and the lore, diving deeply into the essence of the Pokémon world as only true artists can over the course of their own journeys.

Evolving How We See Eevee

The immediately visible two rows contain sculptures of familiar Pokémon. Imai Sadamasa’s Squirtle, Magikarp, Venusaur, Kingler, and Arbok, brought to life via pottery, form the front line. Several feet behind this imposing quintet, Eevee and its first three Evolutions stare out at you from unnervingly lifelike glass eyes. Just as you wouldn’t look away from a predator in close proximity, sculptor Yoshida Taiichiro’s life-size copper Eevee and Evolutions hold your gaze, their size and presence inescapable. But then you start to notice the innumerable tiny details that show just how much thought and consideration Yoshida put into his subjects, and you can’t look away for a different reason entirely.

While Eevee is crafted from copper, Yoshida relied on chemical changes to his chosen material to achieve Vaporeon’s bronze scales, Jolteon’s electrifying gold and silver gilding, and the scarlet patina known as hido for Flareon. Vaporeon is by far the largest of the four—it’s the heaviest of Eevee’s Evolutions in the Pokédex as well—reclines with an almost feline grace. Flareon is in motion, hackles and paw raised with ferocity and intent. Jolteon radiates energy; you expect to see sparks flying from its vivid gold body at any moment. And a tiny Eevee is at the center of it all, testament to the adage that good things come in small packages.

You see, it would be easy to overlook Yoshida’s Eevee—half the size of Flareon and Jolteon and the least vividly colored. But look closer, draw as near as you can without touching, and you’ll discover that the copper pieces are in fact shaped like the elements: snowflakes, moons, stars, leaves, and flames. Eevee contains multitudes, as Pokémon fans already know! So even with its small stature, the Evolution Pokémon is not hidden but is exalted by a thousand tiny details celebrating its potential, a moving revelation courtesy of Yoshida.

But this is not the only discovery to be made here. It’s all too easy to forget that Pokémon are fierce. Their shape and scale, teeth and claws, sometimes get lost in the medium of television. Confronting a Vaporeon roughly the size of a human or the gaping maw of a Venusaur produces a feeling of unease, quickly followed by curiosity and awe. All the things that are wonderful about the natural world are to be found here. These Pokémon have depths we’ve perhaps not previously considered or fully appreciated.

For younger audiences, it’s not unlike a Pokémon amusement park, filled with color and friendly faces. For adults, there’s a persistent thought rattling about that perhaps the Pokémon they knew and love as children have, like many fans, grown up. And we get a new world to explore courtesy of this exhibit—one richer and more challenging than ever before, a world that reveals an abundance of wonder and whimsy but with new colors to play with and an unexpected level of nuance.

Vibrant Vases

The term kogei encompasses a vast range of materials and skills—ceramics, lacquerwork, woodwork, metalwork, dyeing, and weaving, among others. The abundance of vases that display diverse techniques, subjects, stories, and even emotions, speaks to the talent and unique perspectives of the artists as well as the rich palette of inspiration that is Pokémon.

Ceramicist Masumoto Keiko took the “playful” aspect of “playful encounters of Pokémon and Japanese craft” to heart. On the one side, Fire-type Pokémon appear almost trapped in Shigaraki ware, humorously struggling to emerge, or perhaps accepting their fate as hybrid Pokémon-vases. Or more bizarre still, there’s a very real chance that in this universe, Pokémon no longer hatch from eggs but vases. It was the ceramicist’s first foray into Shigaraki ware because, “Until now, I had no motif I wanted to express with Shigaraki ware, but this time, it just clicked.”

Utilizing a kiln called an anagama achieves a degree of spontaneity as the ceramics change drastically depending on how they’re inserted into the kiln; how the firewood is placed into the kiln affects the outcome as well. According to the POKÉMON x KOGEI | Playful Encounters of Pokémon and Japanese Craft Official Catalog, “The super-heavyweight Charizard was about three times as deformed as expected, but this was connected to the power of the anagama and shows the unique charm of this type of kiln.”

On the other side, Water-type Pokémon peek playfully from Masumoto’s sometsuke plates, unglazed ware painted with cobalt pigment. The cool blue plates appear, at first glance, more traditional. It’s at this moment that you may find yourself overwhelmed by the jarring incongruity of being in a room filled with traditional Japanese craft—so serious, so elegant—then suddenly: a Piplup! A Wingull! And yet when you take the time to look closely, it all makes sense. Pokémon originated in Japan, after all. And the artists’ obsessive consideration of the nature of Pokémon is highly evident.

Then there’s Hayama Yuki’s Vase with Pokémon of the Universe, which alone contains more than 500 Pokémon. You can stare as long as you can, but you’re unlikely to find them all in the richly detailed blue and gold depths of this vase, also created using a sometsuke technique of blue hand painting under a transparent glaze. There’s something about the thousands of minute, precious details on this circle, roughly the size of a soccer ball, that evoke a deep sense of meaning and belonging. As the catalog states, “The sense of depth embedded in the slight thickness of the vase’s surface works on the viewer’s psyche, making him or her want to draw closer to the vase and listen closely.”

Until the opportunity and challenge of this exhibit arose, Ikemoto Kazumi had never played a video game. So, he played Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield straight through to the Hall of Fame, and he made three glass vases that tell the story of that journey. Adventure Begins captures the pastoral beauty of Galar through the eyes of a young Trainer just beginning his journey, with an adorable Grookey at his side. The adventure continues in Jump In!, which depicts an assortment of Water-type Pokémon including Gyarados, Goldeen, and Pelipper. And in Hall of Fame, Leon and Charizard are there to welcome you to Wyndon Stadium.

While the storytelling is rich in its simplicity, the process and skill required to produce these vases are anything but. Ikemoto used just eight colors—red, yellow, three shades of green, two of blue, and a pale orange—to create this incredibly detailed world. The artist dissolved enamel pigments in alcohol and then blew them onto the glass. From there, each piece goes into an electric kiln that fuses the enamel to the glass. A process he repeats again and again, like a Poké Ball thrown over and over until one’s arm is sore. For a typical piece, Ikemoto would usually fire a work five to six times; for this series, he used eight firings. If Pokémon games are an exercise in rewarding repetition—catch, battle, repeat—the artist replicated the experience of his very first journey as a Trainer not just through pictures that tell a story but in his process as well.

Installation Sensation

It’s universally acknowledged that if you walk into an art gallery, you’re bound to find something you don’t quite understand. A vase is a vase and a sculpture is a sculpture, but what is 900 ribbons of Pikachu lace tethered to the ceiling? According to textile artist Sudo Reiko, it’s Pikachu’s Adventures in a Forest, and it was inspired by exactly such adventures depicted in Pokémon the Series. The main difference is that Pikachu has somehow become the forest and you’re the one adventuring through it.

Sudo’s connection to Pokémon came not through the games but through watching the show with her son. And out of that shared experience, a thing sprang into being that sounds entirely too fabulous to exist in the real world: a forest of Pikachu. Captured in needle lace, thousands upon thousands of Pikachu, along with the plants Sudo thought would be appropriate to fill the forest—ferns, fronds, vines, and mushrooms—hover like acrobats, filling the gallery with a rich gold warmth. What you do with this unexpected experience is entirely up to you.

Pikachu’s Adventures in a Forest is not the only installation you’ll find at JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles. At first and even second glance, the collection of enormous glass cylinders and shards assembled in the back of the gallery, bear no resemblance to the world of Pokémon. There are no wings or claws, no bucolic scenes of Galar’s countryside. In ideating Vessel -TSURARA-, artist Niimi Hiroki drew inspiration not from a Pokémon or region or story or character but from an attack: Icicle Crash. Niimi wanted to capture the effect of icicle-shaped chunks falling from the sky, an experience that’s at once beautiful and terrifying.

Leveraging his passion for architecture, Niimi incorporates the space itself into his work, creating a unique experience for his audience. For this particular piece, Niimi wanted to capture not only the power of the attack but also “the effects of light spreading across the sky just before icicles fall.” The shape itself is not sufficient to communicate Niimi’s vision; he went over each piece with a power sander again and again to achieve the shine necessary to replicate an icicle. It’s an opportunity to think differently and perhaps more seriously about the nature of Pokémon attacks—the physical impact not just on the targeted Pokémon but the area around it as well. A landscape cluttered with shards of icicles might not give the immediate impression of a battlefield, but in the world of Pokémon, it very well could be.

The catalog elegantly sums up the overall effect: “The unimaginable weight, the pointed shape, the hard edges, and yet the delicacy of the piece […] The viewer experiences a thrill of combined fear and beauty, and is once again reminded of the effects of the Icicle Crash.”

There are countless other pieces of course, each an opportunity to rethink what you thought you knew about Pokémon and the universe built around their existence. Taking that first step into JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles invites you to become the player. Not to challenge Gyms but for you to walk among Pokémon.

POKÉMON × KOGEI | Playful Encounters of Pokémon and Japanese Craft at JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles is open through January 7, 2024. Gallery hours are 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. PDT Monday to Friday and 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. PDT Saturday and Sunday. Entry is free but does require a reservation. Celebrate with the POKÉMON × KOGEI: Kimono Pikachu Plush available exclusively at the Pokémon Center.